


Such a Delicate Thing (With Nothing to Prove)

by redhearted



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Football | Soccer, La Liga, M/M, Soccer, Spain, Spanish National Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 17:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2356667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhearted/pseuds/redhearted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They met each other in sixth grade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such a Delicate Thing (With Nothing to Prove)

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve read my previous fics, you’ll know that I adore this pairing. (Why, you ask? I don’t know. I like each of the characters individually; I love how they interact. I love, especially, how they bring out the youth and vulnerability in each other.)
> 
> This particular fic is what happens when my mind tries to join two things I love: this pairing, and The Shins’ _Simple Song_ ([link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3Kv2-covk)). I love the feel of the song’s lyrics, its delicate _simplicity_ (forgive me), its dreamlike quality. I love what it says about love.

 

>   _When I was just nine years old_
> 
> _I swear that I dreamt_
> 
> _your face on a football field_
> 
> _And a kiss that I kept_
> 
> _under my vest_
> 
> _apart from everything_
> 
> _but the heart in my chest_

 

1991. 

David is too early for the first practice. He’s just too excited. He had been worried whether or not he would make the team. This new school was a lot bigger than his old one, and the boys were mostly bigger than him, too.

He thinks he’s alone, but then notices another boy already here, sitting cross-legged by the side of the pitch, doing the laces on one of his boots, goalkeeper’s gloves on the grass beside him. It’s the captain, Iker. He’s slightly chubby, and taller than David.

David is usually shy, but he’s on the pitch now and he’s never shy out here. He heads over to Iker; when he’s a couple metres away, Iker looks up, smiles.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” David says, flopping down onto the grass. “I’m David. Striker. New to school.”

“I remember. New to Madrid too, right?” Iker gives his laces a good yank, waggles his left foot experimentally.

“Right, yeah.”

Iker brushes his hands off, then sticks one out and shakes David’s, saying solemnly, “Welcome to the school and the team.”

David scuffs the dirt with the heel of a boot and smiles. “Thanks.”

“So I think you said at tryouts you come from up north?”

“Yep.” David smiles. It feels good to be remembered. “Gijón. Have you lived here your whole life?”

“Forever,” Iker agrees. “You’ll love it here. It’s great. Hey, what’s your team?” His eyes shine. David knows that feeling – that lurch of the stomach, that spark in the heart, at the mention of football.

“Sporting de Gijón, _claro_.”

“Nice.”

“You’re just glad I didn’t say Barcelona, I bet?”

Iker grins. “Guess which team I support.”

“No need.” David pushes at one of the gloves between them on the grass, the Real Madrid logo emblazoned on its leather surface. “It’s clear as day: your heart’s pasty as your skin.”

Iker bursts out laughing. “Hey, new boy, don’t be forgetting I’m your captain here.”

“Am I wrong?” David grins back, picking up one of the gloves. “Tell me I’m wrong, then.”

“You are…absolutely, one hundred percent correct.” Iker holds out a hand. “Gimme.”

“Here, I’ll help,” David offers. Iker pauses, then smiles and spreads his fingers. David fits the glove over his hand. When he glances up, he catches Iker’s gaze and he quickly looks down again, feeling a slight blush start in his cheeks.

He likes Iker already. Likes him a lot.

When he finishes putting the glove on Iker’s other hand, he risks another look up to Iker’s eyes. This time their gazes catch. Iker smiles; David’s heart does a flip.

 

 

> _You feel like an ocean made warm by the sun_

 

1997.

David is reading from the poetry anthology for class, head pillowed on Iker’s stomach. After another few stanzas, he lays the book over his face and gives a muffled groan.

“S’matter?” Iker’s hand finds its way to David’s hair. David stills, hoping – hoping – _yes._ This time it’s a rumble of appreciation, when Iker starts to comb his fingers through David’s thick dark hair. Iker chuckles, pulls on the ends a little the way he knows David likes. “You’re such a…you’re like a cat, seriously.”

David doesn’t reply, just stretches lazily and reaches a hand back to squeeze Iker’s thigh. “Appreciate it.” When Iker’s hand pauses: “ _Don’t stop._ ”

“Here.” Iker takes the book off David’s face, puts it on his bedside table. He scoots up the bed, beckoning to David to do the same, until David is sitting between Iker’s spread thighs. Strong hands find his shoulders and squeeze.

Iker’s massages are a fucking piece of heaven.

“ _Fuck_ ,” David lets out, head lolling back. “Feels good.” Iker keeps going, working his thumbs firmly into the muscle, feeling for tension and massaging it out.

Energised, Iker makes David lie flat, face down in the middle of the bed. With that, David immediately knows where this inevitably heading.

“You sly dog,” he accuses, but he’s so relaxed that it comes out sounding like the most tender of endearments. He can’t see Iker, but in his mind he can see the wicked grin spreading across the keeper’s face.

Sure enough, Iker’s hands move down David’s body to his lower back, easing the tension there, before he stops pressing and just gently strokes David’s sides. A pause, then his hands slip up under David’s t-shirt, palms hot against David’s bare skin. David shifts on the bed and bites his lip to keep from moaning. Funny; he’d had no qualms about it just seconds earlier, when they’d been doing just an innocent massage.

After a while Iker moves in the opposite direction, dipping below the waist of David’s old football shorts, fingers tracing the lines of his pelvic bone and then the sensitive skin of that area. David’s starting to get hard against the mattress, mouth dry, body tingling all over with anticipation.

“Lift up a little,” Iker says, and the slight hoarseness to his voice tells David he’s not alone in his arousal. David lifts his hips and Iker slowly, slowly drags the shorts down.

When Iker’s hands find David’s buttocks, fingers spread, squeezing, he does moan.

They have the house to themselves.

 

 

> _Love’s such a delicate thing that we do_
> 
> _With nothing to prove_
> 
> _Which I never knew_

 

1999. 

They break up in the middle of their first years at different universities. In the days afterward, David spends hours just sitting somewhere, mind spinning. What he was thinking, choosing Valencia over Iker? Then his heart fills with resentment: Iker had known he’d gotten the Lucía scholarship at Valencia, that he needed the money, that Valencia’s program was one of the best in the country for what David wanted to do. Yet Iker had chosen to stay in Madrid.

“You’ve been in Madrid your whole fucking life,” David had thrown out, bitter, in the dying moments of their break up. “Make a move, Iker. Live a little.”

_And choose me._

Iker hadn’t, though. Nor had David moved back to Madrid.

These things happened, David told himself.

But not to them. He’d never thought it would happen to them.

 

2000.

It’s near the end of term of first year when Iker calls him.

“I’m transferring.”

David’s heart stops for a long, sweet, painful second.

“Iker?”

“I’m transferring to Valencia, David. I want to be with you.”

David says, “You don’t have to do it for me,” while his heart is thinking, _thank you, thank god, I love you, thank you, I’m sorry._

It sounds like Iker has thought this through carefully – and of course he has, the sacrifice is big, _symbolic_ , more than the mere changing of schools – when he says, “I don’t have to. I choose to.”

David’s knuckles are wet. He blinks hard. “I’m sorry.”

“I know. I love you.”

“Why?”

Why, when there were so many others out there, nicer, better, more clever, more beautiful, closer?

“Because I love you,” Iker answers.

There’s nothing to say but _I love you too._

 

 

> _I know that things can really get rough_
> 
> _when you go it alone_
> 
> _Don't go thinking you gotta be tough,_
> 
> _and bleed like a stone_

 

2003.

When Iker’s cousin, Gabe, who’d also been one of his closest friends, passes away, Iker appears outwardly to recover quickly. He smiles and goes about his day like he’s always done. He gets back from the newspaper headquarters at a decent hour and stays up at night tapping at his computer, working on whatever piece it is at the moment.

One afternoon, though, David comes home early and finds Iker kneeling on the carpet in the living room, staring down at an old photo album as he flips through it. He sees a tear fall, hears it hit the plastic. Watches Iker wipe it away with a thumb.

David puts down his briefcase and keys quietly and goes to Iker, sinks down behind him and slips his arms about his waist. Pulls him tight.

“I’m here for you,” he says, after a while, after casting about for the right words. Maybe he doesn’t need the right words. He just needs to be right here.

“I-I _miss_ him,” Iker says; his voice cracks, breaks into a quiet sob. David strokes his hair, grips his jaw and presses warm lips to his cheek.

“I miss him too. I miss the way he’d slide down those steps, remember, outside school…and remember that time Gonzalez caught Pedro doing that and gave him detention for a week, and Gabe immediately slid down too so Pedro wouldn’t be alone?”

There are some words that are ok. They let Iker know it’s ok to let it out. That he doesn’t have to be _strong_ in the way that society defines it; that it’s a different kind of strength, now, to sit and face life and let it out.

And David knows he always wants to be there for Iker. He loves him.

 

2005.

The evening on the day the law passes, they look at each other and know. Neither one of them has to propose; or perhaps they both do, tacitly, a quiet pact.

They do it on a warm spring day. The wedding is family and close friends only. If there’s one moment David will always remember, it’s that of another memory on the day, as he takes Iker’s hand and slides the ring on. He remembers the day when he was nine, and Iker was ten; remembers the newness of the school, the way it had felt to him then; the sun. The smell of freshly cut grass; Iker’s face as a child. And the look in Iker’s eyes when David slid on the glove.


End file.
